MapMemo (http://www.mapmemo.com/) is a kick ass new program for Mac OS X that breaks new ground (as far as I can tell, anyway.) It is free (as in beer) and it allows you to drag and drop items from the Finder (basically any file) onto a picture (he has maps in mind, to start with.) The idea is that MapMemo builds a relationship between the file and the location you dropped it on. These can then have notes attached, be colour coded and sorted into layers and such. It is difficult to describe because no-one has done anything quite like it before. Worth a look, and a think about new uses.

This product reminds me strongly on the movie Crazy People – where ads were written in an asylum (it is a comedy) – like “Metamucil: It helps you go to the toilet. If you don’t use it, you’ll get cancer and die.”

So on that note, let me introduce your new toilet paper (well, if you happen to live in New York that is…)

Just like regular backups that are checked for accuracy, line conditioning, spike/surge suppression and uninterruptible power are things we all know we should be doing, but somehow never seem to quite get it together properly.

There’s a big thread at Macintouch (continuing from a 2003 thread) regarding various products and strategies available – in particular to Mac users – for these functions. They also point to a company called Zero Surge that have a wealth of information on these topics available.

Interestingly, Mac OS X 10.3 has built-in support for UPSs that have USB (nice TLA’s, no?) – for others (both other UPSs and older Macs) there is PowerGuardian that seems highly recommended.

So the short version is this – you need to protect your computers from every wire that comes into your house : power, telephone, cable modem, TV (if you have an EyeTV for example.) Having a surge suppressor on the house’s main board is good, but not sufficient – it will usually reduce the spikes down to a level that the individual units protecting your equipment can then handle.

Aahh, yes. Airport Express. There’s a new website up [Update: page missing, link to Archived version] that is tracking which third party routers will allow an Airport Express to work in WDS mode. Lucky for me my router seems to be on the list. Although it seems you have to ditch WPA encryption and halve your bandwidth to use WDS. Hmph.